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In the olden days, life wasn’t as fast paced as today. People had time to eat healthy, relax and rejuvenate, work for limited hours, do some physical activity, perform some outdoor activities and still stay strong, hale and healthy.

With today’s life becoming fast paced, there is no time for any of the above. Lifestyle is affected. People are looking for quick solutions in everything, food they eat, time they spend for themselves and family, and activities.

Health is at stake, too many risks at young age. There are new diseases, syndromes and life threats that seem to be coming up every day. But, no one wants to live a life that’s ridden with disease and ill health. And it isn’t like the world we live in is aiding us in our quest to live a healthy life.

That being said, technology is really helping human beings lead the good life, and the more advances there are, the better the quality of life. A person with a good quality of life is a happy person.

In the last decade, there have been many innovations and man’s life is already half covered. It is only a matter of time before we live in a world where every possible combination of ailments can be tackled thanks to technology. The year 2017 is already looking promising with the many technological innovations lined up!

Pens that seal your wounds instantly

Imagine you down from a bike and a wound that is bleeding heavily and the hospital is far off! Does it bring jitters down your spine? Well, not anymore! there is this new innovation, Laser pens, that are said to seal your wound with the laser rays, helping you to cope until you reach hospital in case of major cuts.

For small cuts happening at homes, bruises and others you won’t require to sit in the queue of clinic and take too many injections. This one pen will do the trick and keep you safe. The innovation behind this was launched a few years ago, but 2017 is the year of the laser pen.

Ring Sized Fitness Trackers

Don’t we see too many fit bits in the market already? Yes! But seems they are too big to carry on everywhere and they are sometimes awkward to match your profile at work. That’s what has made people think out of the box, to come out with a solution for this fit bit. Now, it’s going to be Fit Rings.

Rings to monitor health and track your activities

Tiny rings have been designed to track your heart rate, step counter and also sleep hours calculator. They are just like your fit traps, but with a tiny form, just to make you feel free and carry on your life with style and comfort. This ring can be worn even during swimming and those calories burned will be counted too. What more? Its stylish and super!

With life becoming super-fast, changing habits are leading to too many sleep disorders. We see huge rush in sleeping pills being sold off pharmacies. But, taking too many pills aren’t good either. Along with sleep disorders, there is another problem during sleep-Apnoea. This is a problem that occurs during sleeping, causing loss of breath.

Watch to watch Apnoea!

To beat sleep apnoea, and to make spouses the world over happy, there is a new watch designed to track the patterns of the person and normalise sleep. It first keeps track of the person’s habits and other routine things. Then it tries to normalise their sleep with the acquired data. So, don’t be afraid to sleep anymore.

These are few of the medical technological prods for this year, 2017. Hope it was useful.

Technology is moving at a fast pace and the car industry is not far behind. While we have to wait for a driverless car or even a flying car to be in the market (both of which were showcased in CES 2016), we still have some great car technologies which are expected to hit the road in 2016.

The 3 technologies which people are mostly looking forward to are:

Integration of Smart Phone and Car:

Apple and Google are now ready to unveil their car IOS which will help connect your smart phone and various apps that you have on it to your car’s systems. You can use Google and Apple Maps in a way you have never done before including tracking your engine performance during the drive, traffic information to your car system and even street views just in case you cannot understand which is the building that you are looking for.

Not just maps, many app developers are looking to develop many more apps for this including music with Google Play and ITunes, Voice enabled chat apps, Radio Stations, Whatsapp and other such messaging services etc. Google is ahead of Apple at present; however, we are expecting great things from Apple too. Now even Microsoft and Nvidia have joined the game.

Car Companies which have announced their readiness for such a system include BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, Ford, Volkswagen and Nissan. Most of them are announcing this technology for their new cars and some of them have announced kits for retrofitting some of the older cars.

Semi Driverless Cars

Some of the features that we are looking forward to in a driverless car are expected to hit the road in 2016. These are self-parking and communications between cars.

Self-Parking is a blessing for most of us who are not too sure about parallel parking and for those living in large cities. There are some cars which will help you park thanks to sensors and cameras, but expect to see a car which does the parking by itself needing only throttle control from the driver in 2016. BMW and Mercedes are two companies which have showcased this using smart phone controls.

Also expect to see cars communicating with each other to help avoid accidents. They will also send warning of potential hazards ahead to a central server which will then communicate it to all the cars in the vicinity.

Advanced Infotainment Systems

BMW showcased its AirTouch 3D gesture control system at CES 2016. This system uses an infrared camera to read your hand gestures to select various options on your car’s dash. This means saying goodbye dials and switches and saying hello to a wave.

Also thanks to increased communication capabilities, your car’s infotainment system can be connected to your home alarm for emergency monitoring, heating and cooling systems so that you walk into a comfortable home, your cable set-top box to record your favourite shows and may be even your refrigerator for a grocery list to buy on your way home.

All of a sudden your iPhone stops working. The screen no longer responds and freezes. This is a common problem with iPhones, and if it occurs when you are in the middle of an important business event, you might not be able to place important calls or read your emails on the go. There are certain solutions for unfreezing or speeding up your slow phone.

Restart or Reset

Press the “Sleep/Wake” button till the “Slide to power off” message appears. Once the power is off, turn the phone back on by pressing the “Sleep/wake” button till you see the Apple icon. If this does not solve the issue, try resetting the phone. Simultaneously, you can try to press and hold the “Sleep/wake” button and “Home” button for at least 10 seconds and forcefully restart.

Close applications

Your phone might become slow or freeze when you use some applications. Close them by holding down the “Sleep/Wake” button till the “Slide to power off” message appears. Now hold the “Home” button for 6 seconds till the app shuts down and the home screen appears. If the device is slow when running multiple apps, close the unwanted apps to speed it up.

Un-freeze the screen

Is your phone not sensing the touch screen instructions, or is it black so that it appears to be turned off. Then try pressing the “Home” button to resolve it. If it doesn’t work on the first tap, hold it for at least six seconds till you are taken back to your home screen and everything will work normally in most cases.

Update the iOS

Running the phone on previous versions might make the performance of the phone slow or might freeze it, especially when using apps designed for the latest version of the OS. Apple also releases software updates that resolve the issue of freezing. Plug the phone to your computer. In iTunes, click ‘update’ in the device summary menu. For iOS 5 or later versions, you can update by going to ‘Settings -> General -> Software update’, and choosing ‘install now’. But this will take more time than doing it via iTunes.

Use a system monitor

There are many apps available in iTunes, which tell you your memory usage, cache, system logs and other data that affect the performance of the phone. Download them and identify the problematic apps or settings that cause the phone to freeze or slow down. It will also tell you the apps that you can change. They also allow you to free your memory space, speeding up the phone.

Restore your iPhone

This should be your last resort, when none of the above helps. Connect your phone to the computer through USB. Select iPhone from the ‘Devices’ menu and go to ‘Summary’ tab. Now choose ‘Restore’ and create a back-up. Once the phone is restored, the iOS from the previous backup can be installed. If you still face problems, restore the device and set it up as new. This way, you can avoid software bugs affecting your phone from backup.

There was a time when products were everything and after sales service were considered to have least importance from strategic and revenue generation standpoint. Traditional business models that were manufacture driven business models were the need of the hour and profit making was restricted to selling the products or devices.

This idea came to be challenged by the concept of IOT (Internet Of Things). This concept is defined as a conglomeration of items that are enabled via software and various forms of network connectivity to collect data and access each other across a wide range of existing network infrastructure. There emerges a defined link between our physical world and the virtual world that will invariably bring in automation in all fields.

Where are businesses heading with IOT?

With the estimation that more than 28 billion things may be connected to the Internet in the coming 5 years, it is but natural to assume that cloud connection is the next big thing in business portals. The improvements are not just expected to happen around devices that will become smarter and sharper but also around their incredible services that will compel people to subscribe to them for complete access. From wearable bracelets to cars and dogs, everything will probably become service layered. IOT is therefore looking at the possible boom in the global Internet population and is working towards an acceptable platform to prove the effectiveness of the plan.

Let us take a look at how businesses are moving towards IOT:

Gaming manufacturres:

Micro console gaming manufacturers believe that having their own version of the Android S and consequentially, their own community, game store and market place changes the way users look at these games. While the user can be a developer himself, the revenue is earned when he purchases game credits. This coupling of products and services is definitely proving to be a much better source of revenue and a more efficient way of keeping ahead in the business.

Connected Cars:

Not only can the owner track directions but also get walking directions to where exactly it is parked. Automated notices and alerts are sent to avoid over speeding and maintaining safety issues. Smart phones connected to these cars prevent the usage of mobile phones while on the go. These after sales services will be highly appreciated by people who look for ways to keep a check on safety even when absent from the site.

The end benefits that connected IOT devices can provide are:

Easier lives: you can turn on the heater even before you reach home.

Improved efficiency: you can turn on the washing machine at night when the electricity usage gets reduced.

Anticipate what services you might need.

It is quite obvious that with so many potential benefits from IOT connected devices, this will create new winners and leave behind manufacturing-driven business models. The change in business systems will be for good, from the emotional as well as the revenue point of view; it will not only be a guaranteed success but also be a precursor of many more things to come.

If you are in the market for a new gaming laptop or are you upgrading the existing CPU, then you must be reading a lot of about the processors being used in them. The best processors in the market today are by Intel. The two top selling models are the Core i5 and Core i7. This article will help you understand which of the two is more suitable for you.

Both of these processors are from Intel and as such have many similar characteristics with a few exceptions. These differences are as follows:

Cores: A core is an independent processing unit which means the better it is, the better your processing speed. Core i7 has a better processing power as compared to a Core i5. A single core performs one task at a time, which is why most CPUs have dual core or quad core processors to allow for multi-tasking. Both i7 and i5 are available in dual and quad forms. I7 is also available with 6 and 7 core processors.

Hyper-threading: Hyper-threading is Intel’s nod to parallel processing. A core with hyper-threading behaves as multiple cores. For example, a single core processor with hyper-threading acts like a dual-core processor; a dual core processor with hyper-threading acts like a quad core processor. It is here that we see the difference between i7 and i5. i5 allows a maximum of four processes at one time and so a quad core with hyper-threading is not available. Whereas i7 has even a six core hyper-threading processor which can handle 12 processes at a time.

Cache: Cache is the onboard memory which helps the processor do repetitive tasks faster and also help do a lot of background tasks without disturbing your work in progress. An i5 has a cache between 2–6MB, whereas some of the current i7 models even have 13MB caches.

Clock Speeds: Clock Speed is a measure of the processor’s operating speed. It is measured in MHz (million pulses per second) or GHz (billion pulses per second). Both i5 and i7 have turbo boost feature which allows the processor to run at speeds higher than their base speed. The best i5 processor has a base clock of 2.3GHz and a max of 2.9GHz whereas i7 has a base of 2.6GHz and a boosted maximum of 3.2GHz.

Addressable Memory: Most of i5 and i7 processors have a 16GB addressable memory. Some of the latest i7 are also being introduced with a 32GB memory.

In Conclusion

The Core i7 is a much more feature rich, faster and a higher power processor; however a system with Core i7 costs almost $200 more than a Core i5 system. So you can consider Core i7 only if you need a high processing speed for example if you run a large amount of data or do a lot of multimedia work or run scientific software etc. On the other hand if you are more interested in a regular usage like gaming etc. then the Core i5 might be a better choice for you.

Internet of things (IoT) refers to an environment where a group of objects and devices containing embedded electronics and software and are interconnected over network. The interlinked smart objects can process and exchange data. This new technology accelerates a faster and better tomorrow. The IoT technology when augmented with advanced sensors and circuits helps in achieving connectivity between physical world and computer based systems.

What does IoT connect?

“Things” connected by Internet of Things can refer to a plethora of objects and systems in today’s technical world. They can be sensors, heart implant devices, Automobiles, Smartphone, DNA analysis devices, television, machineries etc. Till date, IoT is found to be implemented for only machine to machine connectivity. This list continues to expand as the IoT experts continue to develop advanced technologies. Experts are of the opinion that IoT will encompass around 50 billion objects in its network by 2020.

Types and categories

Based on enabling technologies, IoT can be classified as

RFID and near field communication

Optical tags and quick response codes

Low energy Bluetooth

Based on mode of implementation, IoT is further classified into

Wearable

Media

Home automation

Industrial automation

Smart appliances

Incredible abilities of IoT

Internet of Things is definitely set to change the world we live in and there is no looking back on that. There are many practical world examples to demonstrate the manifold uses of IoT. Few are listed below:

1. Smart cars with traffic optimization, driving directions and the ability to communicate with other smart cars.

6. Various energy management and transportation systems are also embracing IoT for smarter execution.

7. IoT helps in monitoring and planning of city’s infrastructure. It monitors the change in structural conditions and also provides statistics on the infrastructure usage.

8. Smart industrial systems are increasingly being integrated with energy monitoring mechanism to provide and efficient and energy optimized production.

What does the future look like?

Experts and industrial giants are of the opinion that the future looks brighter day by day. Currently there are few controversies over the chances of security breach and autonomy if IoT is implemented. It could also result in manifold increase of waste disposal. However one cannot deny the fact that IoT is the giant among all technical advancements taking place. It has already started impacting the way we live. With more devices joining in, IoT promises to solve many problems. Future holds a lot of opportunities and challenges for humankind to explore and innovate.

The smartphone era has brought drastic improvement in the quality of photos being taken. With high pixel cameras, added with zooming feature, these photos were considered the best.

But, of late, the advent of dual camera technology had proven that photos taken using smartphones can be better in terms of quality and precision. The technology uses a combined output of two camera lenses to give a more precise, clear and crisp image.

The Game-Changing Technology

Corephotonics, a two year Israeli company had brought this concept a couple of years ago, which could revolutionize the concept of the future smartphone photography. The technology became hot topic in the mobile sector.

At present, the dual camera system possibly works only on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 platform. This platform has signal processors for two images from both cameras and processes them simultaneously to give a final result.

The results are gained from two lenses with individual sensors- a side-angled lens and a telephoto lens. The data from both the lenses are processed by onboard software to give the final image. The processing will include comparison of images from both lenses and detecting the pixels that are off and use a comparatively clearer pixel for the picture.

Differential weightage is given to one or the other lenses based on the choice of zoom by the user. A 3x zoom is made possible for stills and 5x zoom for 1080p HD videos.

The dual camera is designed to provide quality shots even in low light areas with four times the resolution of what can be achieved with ordinary smartphones. The resultant image from both cameras will be significantly sharper while it is zoomed in. There is also less signal disruption compared to the digital zooms used at present.

With the Corephotonics technology, phones are going to remain slim, but will deliver better image results. The only aspect that reportedly requires attention is the processing power of the phone. In order for the system to work perfectly, phones are supposed to have decent processing power, but it doesn’t have to be too excessive.

The system enables keeping noise to minimum with its telephoto lens removed, hence taking black and white pictures. With more light coming in, the fidelity of the image is increased. The wide angle component still restores the color as it is, taking in all real aspects into the picture.

The dual technology captures HDR images in one shot, unlike others that takes three different shots. The usual motion blur from HRD shots is eliminated by this feature. All the processing is done in real time, avoiding discernible lags. With two cameras, focusing is also improved.

Corephotonics has developed and made this technology available for mobile users. The 13 megapixel sensor is directly available from Sony. The phones with dual camera lens will come with a slight premium for the extra lens. But there is still debate about whether or not the dual lens camera phones can compete with phones that use high pixel single lens camera.

Virtual reality has in the last few years become a familiar word. With 3D and 4D experiences, people are well versed with the concept and experience of virtual reality. Augmented reality, on the other hand, is still a little unfamiliar. The tech world is of course abuzz with it and there is constant research and development to improve and increase the involvement of augmented reality in our everyday lives

Are augmented reality and virtual reality the same thing?

The first and most common misconception is that augmented reality is the same or similar to virtual reality. Virtual reality is about showing the user an alternate virtual world, whereas augmented reality enhances and adds information to the world you are seeing be it virtual or real.

Augmented reality has the potential to change the face of technology, much like smartphones, when they first came in to the scene. A smartphone is like our personal remote control to a vast galaxy of data and augmented reality is much the same. As of now, augmented reality is nascent, but soon it will make its way into our lives and before we know it will become essential.

The drawback for augmented reality, as of now, is the logistics of the equipment one can use to run it. Though a smartphone can offer the platform, it’s not the ideal equipment to relay augmented information, whereas glasses would probably make a better fit (like they do for virtual reality).

There are prototype augmented reality glasses available in the market today that provide a glimpse of the future of this technology, but there is a great deal of potential for these model glasses to become more slender, more inexpensive and more user friendly.

Where does it fit?

Augmented reality will make its best fit in the virtual world for starters. The video game sector, in particular, has been the perfect entry point for augmented reality and it has already got its footprint in that segment.

Augmented reality has several benefits in other sectors too. Augmented and virtual reality together can provide assistance in quality control and training. There are prototype applications that allow optimizing of logistics and packing of inventory. The packer can find out size and weight of the boxes along with suggestions on the best position to optimally load the inventory.

Training and maintenance are augmented/virtual reality technology can bring about a big change. So much money is spent on training, not just in terms of time, but materials too. It can help improve assembly line efficiency by training technicians virtually. Augmented/virtual reality applications can elevate workouts and provide better feedback and motivation for workout fanatics. A virtual classroom with augmented information will provide a unique learning experience for future generations, both at school and graduate levels.

The future possibilities are limitless. Augmented reality can change not just the face of technology but also how we perceive and use it. From education to employment, health and fitness to entertainment, augmented/virtual reality is poised to dive in and change the way we live.